Naturally, there’s a whole slew of things I’d do, if ever I obtained unquestioned plenary power over the world and all its machinations. The list is well nigh endless. But, just for today, I’d settle for the power to call a moratorium on the use of the word ‘botch’, in any form, throughout the news industry.
It’s the little things that mean a lot.
–E. B. White
Der Spiegel gives us a great example of how misleading crime statistics (okay, statistics in general) can be:
I have quite the love/hate relationship with my chosen profession, as some of you know. I’ve been a teacher for 14 years now, and all of those years have been here in the same small suburban town. The frustrations of teaching in the public schools are many, and severe. Especially for someone, like me, whose philosophy of education differs sharply from the status quo. I’ve written about this before, so I won’t go into detail, but if I had to boil all my complaints down to one sentence, it would be “If we were starting from scratch, we would never purposely come up with a system like this”.
On the other hand, teaching is like no other profession. The importance of education cannot be underestimated, thus teachers are a vital part of our world. The gravity of this truth weighs heavily on me every day, even the days when I hate my job with the white-hot heat of a thousand burning suns. I have influence over young minds. That is a sobering and frightening thing. It is a power I wield, not because I want power, but because I want to teach, and that is the price of doing my job. Even within the confines of the ineptly-run 21st century American public school system, teachers have the opportunity to change the world. Even I, the king of low-self-esteem, can look at myself in the mirror each morning and know I’m about to go do something worthwhile. It is hard to put a price on that.
So this dissonance rages withing me. I want desperately to get out of this job and do something less stressful and more remunerative. I have this stupid law degree hanging in my bedroom, beautifully framed and not doing me a bit of good. I pay my annual dues to the bar association so I can practice law, only to go back, year after year, to teaching. I’m in student-loan debt up to my eyebrows. My house is too small for my new family and I can’t afford to do anything about it. I’m not poor by any stretch of the imagination, and I know I’m in fact richer by far than 99% of the people on earth, but sometimes it rankles me to my core to make a teacher’s salary.
Every work day I’m taunted by the fact that I’m locked in to a system that de-motivates children to learn, and waters down the curriculum nearly to the point of irrelevancy. Surly children rule the hallways while those who want desperately to learn are shouted down. Politicians, the least qualified people in the world to make education policy, constantly throw roadblocks in my way and actually seem to want my kids to fail. I leave my school almost every day of the year in rage and frustration over one stupid, senseless thing or another that has happened to me for the millionth time.
And, finally, I find myself on the verge of going to my nearest fast-food restaurant and flipping burgers at the risk of humiliation and insolvency just so I never have to teach another day of my life.
And then I go to Wal-Mart.
And I see a lady whose children I taught a few years ago. She tells me what a difference I made in her son’s life, and how I was the only one who understood what he was going through, and the only one who really knew what he needed out of school, and how that nobody else has been able to connect with him the way I did. She tells me he’s growing strong, working hard, and loving school. It’s still not easy for him, and there are still struggles, but when he goes to college, she believes he’ll be ready. Not totally because of me, I know, but partly because of me, I’m sure.
Well, hell.
Now, all that stuff I hate so much seems less irksome. I’m a little less angry, a little less frustrated. I’m a little more content with what I have and not as hot-and-heavy to abandon ship.
Curse you, Wal-Mart!
I can’t see that Barack Obama has much going for him that qualifies him for the presidency. That’s not an insult, it’s just an observation. It’s the same observation I made about GWB when he came on the scene. What makes either man qualified? Nothing in particular. That’s become clear with the current president. With Mr. Obama, so far nothing is exactly jumping out at me and screaming “presidential material” either.
Again, I don’t mean this to demean him as a person. I don’t see much in anybody in public life that qualifies them to be president. All I see are people who have ambition toward power; this in itself disqualifies them automatically. All I see are people who think the government is the most important vehicle for making society better. This too disqualifies them. All I see are people who don’t have any concept, whatsoever, of limited government. The idea of limited government is the bedrock of American political philosophy, keep in mind. That no one seriously champions the concept in all of Washington DC (apart from Ron Paul, and how many of you have even heard of him?) disqualifies just about everyone in that town.
So, unless a miracle occurs, we’ll again be stuck without a good candidate to lead our government, as we have been for the last twenty years or so. Great – how encouraging.
But, having said that, Mr. Obama seems like a decent, honest human being; and if he keeps Hilary Clinton out of the White House, I’ll vote for him out of simple gratitude.
An artist must be a reactionary. He has to stand out against the tenor of the age and not go flopping along; he must offer some little opposition.
– Evelyn Waugh
The headline this morning read: Bush To Announce Iraq Plan Wednesday
That’s where I quit reading.
Is there anyone in the White House who is even remotely in touch with planet earth? Is it not completely obvious this is a transparent attempt to perform political CPR? Is there anyone in this country (or for that matter, any other country you care to name) who believes this “plan” is anything but Public Relations horseapples?
(I’ve always wanted to use ‘horseapples’ in a sentence like that)
I’ll be glad to apologize profusely if it turns out there really is a fantastic new plan in the works, and the timing of the announcement has nothing to do with poll numbers or a newly-sworn-in Democratic Congress.
But I’d also bet the ranch no apology will be necessary.
It’s not so much the incompetence – the fact is I’ve come to expect that from the Executive Branch. It’s the patronization that galls. There needs to be a cabinet-level position for someone whose only job is to give reality checks to the President; tell him he’s being transparent and shallow. Secretary of Nonsense, or something like that.
I’m disgusted by the garish display self-celebration Nancy Pelosi has made this week. A “victory tour”? Lavish dinners? Waving the gavel in the air while surrounded by her grandchildren, in front of the Speaker’s chair? Proclaiming herself the “Most Powerful Woman In America? Being Photographed with a whip?
Lady, you’re just the Speaker of the House. You’re not Miss America, the Queen of England, and the Blessed Virgin Mary all wrapped up into one neat package, okay? You’re a public servant. S-e-r-v-a-n-t. Get it? You’re there to administer parliamentary procedure, not sit upon a throne and throw us peasants morsels now and then in some twisted 21st Century noblesse oblige.
Oh, you’re a woman speaker. Ah, I see now.
Say, here’s a thought: maybe it would do a lot more for the cause of women in this country if you acted like it was no big deal; a natural, plausible, inevitable thing. You know, instead of acting like you’re Lincoln freeing the slaves or something.
Please, for all of our sakes, get over yourself and stop acting like a newly crowned empress. You’re a member of Congress. In the history of our country, it’s a not exactly a given that this makes you a great statesman (sorry, statesperson), sage, and hero.
You’re embarrassing yourself and us. Just do your job.
Greetings to the individual who dropped by this blog after typing
“scam” ‘England” “Lucy Ball”
into their friendly neighborhood search engine.
At the risk of sounding less than modest, let me also point out that I was the first listing. Ahem.
I’m a little amused, a little repulsed, and a little mystified.
Which, come to think of it, is my reaction to almost everything these days.
Every once in a while, you read something that gives flesh and blood to an idea that’s been rolling around in your subconscious for quite some time.
Finding a jewel like this is doubly fortunate, as it solidifies the concept in one’s thinking, and saves one the trouble of having to write it.
Here’s a snippet, if you’re still too hung over to click a link:
CARNIVAL, CULTURE AND CATHOLICISM
“Yet there can be seasonal misrule only within a prevailing architecture of order, just as the debates and disputations of the late medieval period are possible only within the context of an assured and absolute truth which governs humankind.” – Peter Ackroyd’s The Life of Thomas More
[T]here are certain strains of Catholicism that seem inclined towards . . . a Jansenist or rationalist conception of the Faith. It appears to me that these unhealthy tendencies among American Catholics started with too great an influence of Protestant attitudes, but have been exasperated by the current culture wars . . .
. . . There is much talk here and elsewhere about the importance of engaging the culture . . . [however] if there is no oasis from the culture wars, aren’t we condemned to a shallow faith that can never satisfy a full and healthy life? If we have no place for carnival, can we really call what we have a Catholic culture?
